“Where’s me bread like ye promised?” demanded Snake.
“You’ll get it, don’t worry.” Kendra knelt down so she was eye level with the child. He was about seven. His face was pinched with hunger, his eyes wary and too old for his age.
“You’re the one who delivered a note here last week?” she asked gently.
He knuckled the bridge of his snubbed nose. “Aye.”
Kendra had to control the excitement beginning to rise inside her. “Okay. Good. Can you tell me who gave you the note? Describe the person?”
“Aye,” he said, but his gaze slipped past her shoulder. His eyes widened.
Kendra’s neck prickled and she twisted around just as the person came up behind her.
55
You must stop her.”
Rebecca gave Lady Louisa a sideways glance as they trotted across the Putney heath. It had been a mistake to agree to accompany the other woman for another ride, she now knew. But Lady Louisa had been agitated and Rebecca had thought a good gallop might be just the thing to calm her overwrought nerves. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be working.
“I’m afraid I have very little control over Miss Donovan’s actions,” Rebecca said.
“She brought a Runner into our home! To question my father!”
“I’m terribly sorry that you are overset, but I’m certain Miss Donovan had good reason,” she said carefully. “I have not spoken to her today, so I do not know about this latest development.”
“It is insulting. A Bow Street Runner!” Lady Louisa whispered, obviously horrified. “Everyone in London will know about it.”
Rebecca looked at Lady Louisa’s face, tight with her anger, and sighed. “Miss Donovan does not mean any harm.”
“But she does harm. She’s destroying my family.”
Rebecca twisted in her seat to see that Lady Louisa’s groom had fallen some distance behind. “Shall we race again?” she suggested, turning back to Lady Louisa. There was no way her mare could beat Lady Louisa’s stallion, but she wanted something to distract the woman from her melodrama about Kendra.
She thought Lady Louisa might object, so she spurred her horse, leaning low as Sophia flew over the heath toward the hedgerows. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lady Louisa whip past, sailing Caspian over the hedgerows as easily as she had the previous day.
Rebecca had thought to stop at the hedgerows, but now she pushed Sophia onward. Her heart pounded in her veins and the ground and hedges blurred for a moment as the horse leaped in a graceful arc, coming down on the other side with enough force to throw her hat over her eyes.
She pulled up on the reins in order to straighten her hat, and only then did she realize that Lady Louisa had continued on through the copse of trees. Rebecca lifted her reins to urge Sophia forward, to catch up with the other woman.
“You won,” she said when she finally caught up.
Lady Louisa said nothing, and it became clear that the race hadn’t been enough to distract her from her problems at home.
“Do you know why Miss Donovan and Mr. Kelly visited your father?” Rebecca asked finally. It seemed better to have the conversation out in the open than to continue to dance around it.
“Frances said that they’d found the necklace.”
They’d come into the picturesque clearing. Lady Louisa pulled up on her reins, bringing her horse to a stop. She lifted her knee from around the pommel, and slid to the ground. She gathered up her riding habit’s skirts over her arm and then walked the horse to the nearest tree, tying the reins.
“Lady Frances?” Rebecca dismounted.
Lady Louisa bit her lip, and tears glittered in her eyes. “She overheard them talking. She was furious. I’m almost afraid of what she will do.”
Kendra slowly pushed herself to her feet, angling herself in front of both boys when she faced the other woman. “Lady Frances.”
She looked as beautiful as always, wearing a mauve carriage dress and a matching bonnet with feathers, rosettes, and ribbons. Yet her hazel eyes glittered dangerously and the hand holding her riding crop twitched, the crop snapping against her skirt violently.
“Miss Donovan.” The woman’s lips curved in a sharp, almost predatory smile. “I would like to speak with you. I’ve brought my phaeton. Shall we go for a ride?”
Kendra eyed the riding crop. “I don’t think so.”
Lady Frances dropped her smile. “Then I shall talk to you here. I do not care a fig if you are the Duke of Aldridge’s ward, you have crossed a line. How dare you come to my family’s home and accuse my father of murder. How dare you humiliate my family by bringing a common thief-taker into our home!”
“If you were humiliated by that, I can only imagine how you felt about Lady Dover.”
“My God, you have nerve . . .” Rage contorted Lady Frances’s features as she advanced. “I shall destroy you.”
She raised the riding crop and brought it down with such force that Kendra had no doubt it would have flayed her flesh, leaving her face permanently scarred, if she hadn’t dived to the side. After this initial attack, Kendra didn’t hesitate. She darted forward and brought her elbow up, smashing it with a satisfying crack into Lady Frances’s nose.
The other woman screamed and dropped the riding crop, bringing her gloved hands up to her nose, now gushing blood.
“Gor! Ye done drawn ’er cork!” Snake exclaimed and shot Kendra an admiring look.
Kendra pivoted back to the towheaded boy. “Was she the one who gave you the note?”
“Watch out!” Snake yelled.
Kendra twisted around again just as Lady Frances, blood smearing her face and dripping from her chin, came at her.
“What do you think your sister would do?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know,” Lady Louisa said quietly, and looked at Rebecca. “Do you see why it’s imperative that you stop Miss Donovan from her inquiries?”
“I am not Miss Donovan’s keeper. I cannot stop her, even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Lady Dover deserves justice.”
Lady Louisa’s face twisted in pain. “How can you say such a thing? She was a trollop—a whore! She seduced my father and turned my mother into a laughingstock in the Ton.”
Rebecca reacted to the despair she saw in the other woman’s face, reaching out to touch her arm. “I’m so very sorry. But if this is why you invited me to ride, so I could be your conduit to Miss Donovan . . . I cannot help you.”
“You will not help me. And for what? For a woman like Lady Dover?” She gave a hollow, bitter laugh.
“You are overwrought.”
Lady Louisa jerked her arm away from Rebecca’s touch, wiping at the tears that spilled down her cheeks. “I have every right to be. Lady Dover was a whore intent on destroying my family—wearing the necklace, my mother’s jewels! And using her bastard child to convince my father to leave us. She was evil.”
Rebecca stood very still, watching the other woman’s features contort with her rage. “Lady Dover told you that she was pregnant?”